Next Time You See Me (10 page)

But I wasn’t Jasmine.

I was me, and when I did something impulsive it tended to beg the kind of danger I was sure Jasmine had never entertained in her life. If my life had invited darkness, hers had been filled with sparks of light. Which was probably why I had come to like her so much and why so many men fell in love with her.

After dinner, we refused to let Jasmine help with the dishes and sent her home. Standing beside me, drying as I washed, Mom caught my eye and asked, “So? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Depends.”

“Jasmine doesn’t want to spend her birthday alone.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“So do it—surprise her. You could really use a vacation, anyway, Karin. I’ll be here with Ben.”

I rested my rubber-gloved hands on the edge of the sink and looked at my mother. The same thing had occurred to me, and she was right: I could use a few days away from the day-to-day world that was filled with reminders of Mac. And I was convinced that Jasmine, of all people, didn’t want to celebrate all by herself, beneath a palm tree or not.

By the time I went to bed I had an electronic ticket folded in my purse and a weekend bag all ready to go.

Chapter 6

T
he next day, my plane landed at Miami International Airport an hour before Jasmine’s flight was due—when I had spied her ticket, I’d taken note of the airline and time her flight was leaving New York, and finding out her arrival details had been easy. I dragged my carry-on bag off the plane and past the luggage carousel (I hadn’t checked anything), thinking that the post-holiday traffic would get worse by Sunday when I was due to fly home. I hadn’t seen when Jasmine was leaving but decided that two nights would be about as long as I could bear to be away from Ben.

I walked the long corridors to the central part of the airport. There didn’t appear to be much to do to entertain yourself while you were waiting, unless you liked fast food, or unless I had missed something. I bought a Styrofoam cup of burned coffee at a snack bar called Miami Express, parked myself at a table near its outer edge, and people-watched. Jackson and I used to love doing this back when we traveled pre-Cece; we would sit and notice things, like the higher the heel the shorter the step, or the deeper the tan the lower the cleavage, or the balder the head the hairier the chest.

I still missed Jackson. And
yearned
for Cece, my darling little daughter.

And I still loved Mac.

I tried not to think of him but instead to concentrate on the flow of travelers passing through the airport, coming and going to and from cities and countries all over the world: all the men and women and children I had never seen before and would never see again, each of whom was a universe unto him- or herself. It was amazing how many people there were. And humbling. I felt diminished, and my load felt lightened, to recognize my own insignificance in the flow of so much humanity. The longer I looked, the more I recognized common traits ranging from individual eccentricities to complete personas: There was the way this man walked with a kind of waddle that reminded me of a neighbor of my parents’ old house in Montclair, there was the way a girl wore her sunhat that brought back a girl I’d known when I was about ten. And there were the broader categories people fell into as if we were all a certain type of doll: the short, stout, middle-aged mother in casual-expensive clothes; the lanky young dad dressed like his son in jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers; the well-groomed businessman who walked at a brisk pace. I looked for
my
type, wondering if I could force myself to see how I appeared to others, and found the first example in less than a minute: the tall, thin, semiattractive woman somewhere in her thirties, hair a shaggy mess, no makeup except for the slightest trace of lipstick, and dressed in shorts, T-shirt, and sandals as if she still thought she was on summer vacation from high school. One of my own type passed, then another. And then I spotted what I would have called the Jasmine: a pulled-together woman in her late twenties or early thirties, tight sundress, legs waxed to a shine, fingernails and toenails newly polished red, broad true smile.

When I looked at my watch and saw that only twenty minutes had passed since my flight had landed, I couldn’t believe it. Well then, back to my game.

I saw four women who matched my mother, six elderly men who matched my late father, a dozen brothers Jon and three Andreas, his wife. There were at least nine families just like theirs, with two parents, a daughter about seven, and a son about four. Eleven families like mine and Jackson’s and mine and Mac’s, with two parents and a toddler, either a girl or a boy. I noted single parents of both genders tagged by groups of children varying in number and size. And then I saw a Danny—a man-boy with graying stubble, tight jeans, and a faux retro T-shirt—and was jolted out of my playful mood. The real Danny was still sitting in jail; Rosie had refused to post bail or hire him a private lawyer; a trial date had been set for January. Even I had started believing he had killed his parents . . . and for what? A cut of their modest will? A diamond ring (which, to my knowledge, still had not been found)?

Suddenly exhausted, I bought a second cup of coffee and sat back down at the same table. As I was prying off the plastic lid, some of the scorching hot liquid splashed onto my fingers and I reacted with a loud “Ow!” When I looked up, I saw that a man dragging a small black wheelie suitcase had paused briefly to look at me.

Mac
.

I stood up, accidentally pushing the table and upending the entire cup of coffee. Hot brown liquid seeped onto the floor, just missing my suitcase.

Or a man who looked just like Mac.

“Wait!” I left my suitcase and jogged after him.

A man who looked
so much like Mac it was uncanny
, walking the way he walked, bracing his shoulders the same way, wearing just the kind of clothes he would wear: jeans, sneakers, button-down shirt, a digital watch. He picked up his pace and I started to run.

“Mac! Wait!”

I couldn’t tell if he knew I was following him or if he even heard me. He kept moving, pressing his way through a swinging glass door and heading directly to a taxi stand at the curb.

“
Mac!
”

His face was obscured as he sidled into a waiting cab, leaned forward to direct the driver, and drove away.

I had caught only the quickest glimpse of him when he paused to note my spill. But it was him. I knew it:
It was him
.

Was it him?

I stood at the curb watching the car drive down the palm tree–lined road, shrink into a distance of hazy sun, and evaporate like a mirage. How long did I stand there before someone’s suitcase bumped against my leg?

“Sorry,” a woman said as she rolled past.

“That’s okay.” But she didn’t hear me.

“J
asmine!” I ran at her as soon as I saw her coming out of her gate wearing a bright yellow halter dress. “
I saw him.
Mac, my husband,
he was here
.”

In front of her now, her up-close expression—astounded—startled me as much as my appearance at the Miami airport obviously startled her.

“Whoa, girl! What are you doing here?”

“I came to surprise you, so you wouldn’t have to spend your birthday weekend alone.”

She smiled. “You really
are
my friend.”

“Listen, Jasmine, listen to me—”

“Did you say you just saw your husband?” Her tone was too calm; it was clear she didn’t believe me. Why would she believe me? Why would anyone? The case was closed: Mac was dead.

“I was killing time waiting for your flight to arrive and
there he was—Mac—walking through the airport
.”

“That’s
crazy
.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“No!
It’s
crazy—crazy good. Where is he?”

“He got in a taxi. Drove away.”

“He didn’t see you?”

“He did see me; at least I think he saw me. I called his name. I followed him.”

“And then?”

“He kept walking.”

Her eyes mirrored the deflation I felt when I heard myself saying that:
He kept walking
.

“So maybe it wasn’t him,” she said cautiously. “Maybe it just looked like him.”

“I don’t think so.” But my certainty was already draining away.

She put her hands on my shoulders, bracing me. “He looked at you. You said his name. And he kept walking.” She pulled me into a hug. “Listen, baby—”

“He looked so much like Mac,” I said, dissolving into tears.

“You ever read that book
The Year of Magical Thinking
?”

“Joan Didion?”

“Good book, huh?”

I nodded. Cried.

“She saw her husband everywhere she went for like a year after he passed. And he had a heart attack right in front of her, eating dinner at the table.”

I nodded again. Cried some more. The first time I was a widow, I used to see Jackson all over the place. And Cece. And the two of them together.

“And she still believed she saw him. She kept on seeing him even though she
knew
he was gone.”

The word she kept avoiding was
dead
. Didion’s husband was
dead
. And my husband was
dead
.

“I’m sorry.” I pulled away so I could wipe my wet face with the palms of my hands. “I promise I won’t ruin your birthday.”

She smiled the way a mother would when she didn’t believe a word that came out of her kid’s mouth but didn’t want to say so.

“You know what?” she said. “Let’s just turn around and head back to New York, okay? It was so sweet that you wanted to surprise me but maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea after all. And now that I think about it, I’d rather be in New York for my birthday.”

“Liar.”

“Like
you
know what’s going through my mind.”

“But we’re here.”

“No biggie.” She forced a smile. “We’ll go back.”

But it seemed pretty obvious to me that she was offering to sacrifice her birthday trip to get me back onto safer ground.

“No.”

“
Karin
.”

“If I were you, I’d definitely want to spend my birthday under a palm tree with a Blue Devil in my hand,
not
pretending I was at sleepaway camp—even if there was a cute guy involved.”

Her eyes rolled up, mock thinking, and she held flattened palms toward the ceiling, pretending to weigh the two options against each other. “Hmm . . . palm tree and Blue Devil . . . hot guy in cold New York.” Her hands went up and down until finally the palm tree won. “Okay, but no crazy talk.”

“I promise.”

She insisted on calling her hotel to change the reservation from a single to a double instead of waiting until we got there. That was another thing that surprised me about her: She could be just as fussy about details as she could be spontaneous and toss them all to the wind.

Half an hour later we pulled up in front of the Marriott hotel in downtown Miami. The hotel was a tower that stood straight and tall beside Biscayne Bay like an uptight tourist too zipped up to undress and get into the water. We checked into our room on the twenty-first floor. Jasmine chose the double bed nearer the bathroom and I got the one by the window. When I opened the drapes I was surprised to see that we had lucked out and gotten a sweeping view of the bay instead of the city. Sailboats drifted on sparkling blue water as if it wasn’t a frigid day back in New York.

When I turned around, Jasmine had already thrown open her suitcase and put on a black string bikini. A tiny diamond sparkled at the edge of her belly button, and every inch of her perfect skin was smooth as a peach. I was putting on my bathing suit—a two-piece that didn’t qualify as a bikini compared to what Jasmine was wearing—when I felt something hit me. I looked up: Jasmine has tossed over her spare bikini, gold with metal hoops at the hips holding meager front to meager back.

“Thanks, but this is so not me,” I said.

“Put it on or we’re heading back to New York.”

I stripped off my blue spandex and pulled on Jasmine’s bathing suit, which more or less fit.

Jasmine surveyed me with a smile. “You are one hundred percent Miami, like you were born here!”

I found my sunglasses buried under my nightgown, put them on, and opened my arms. “Ta da! Ready to hit the beach?”

“Just be yourself, okay? Don’t try to be happy and fun. That’s my department.”

“Then why am I wearing this?”

“Looking the part is half the battle, that’s why.”

We rode the elevator down to the lobby and found our way to the nearest public beach. It was cooler near the water, and crowded. We spread out our hotel towels, dug in our hotel beach umbrella, lay down—and that was it. Hours melted away. It was lovely. Jasmine either read or talked in bursts—“I like working in the bookstore but I’m not much of a reader; I’d rather watch TV”. . . “My ex used to take food right off my plate; talk about annoying”. . . “Billy’s perfect except for one thing: He’s got no money”—as I listened and otherwise let my mind detour to thoughts I couldn’t share with her.

I would plan something special for tomorrow, her birthday; make a reservation at a nice restaurant and order a cake. I would ask at the hotel’s front desk for a recommendation.

And I would look for Mac. I had to.

What if it
had
been him I’d seen at the airport? What if he was right here in Miami? What were the odds of that? I propped myself up on my elbows and gazed back and forth across the teeming beach. If Mac was here, he’d be wearing a T-shirt to cover his scars—at first glance I saw half a dozen men wearing T-shirts with their bathing suits. What if one of them was my husband? What if he
was
here in this city, right now? What if everywhere I went for a full year, I saw him? Haunted, insane, every sighting an unrequitable yearning to have him back. I lay down on my lumpy towel, closed my eyes, and let the heat of the sun soak into my skin.